


Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

by soundingsea



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Community: apocalyptothon, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2008-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:10:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/pseuds/soundingsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last time the world ended, Terminators roamed the earth. Destroying, yeah, but devouring? Not their style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ficangel](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ficangel).



> Spoilers: through SCC 1x09. Thanks to spiralleds for beta-reading and ironchefjoe for zombie expertise.

###### Wednesday February 27, 2008

Blood and corpses dot Valley Square Mall's open-air food court, draped and dripping over the wicker chairs. Could be a scene out of a horror movie, only it's too quiet. No eerie music cue telling them to run.

"Think Sarkissian is here?" Derek asks. He's got his gun out, daylight be damned. Only cops in sight are a man and a woman splayed out on the sidewalk, limbs at awkward angles in their uniforms.

"I think we'd better leave," Sarah says, her voice tight and controlled. She turns on her heels and heads towards where they parked the Jeep.

Derek's about to follow her when the male cop moves. And not the way a wounded human with broken bones should move, either. Derek may have spent half his life fighting machines, but he remembers a time when monsters weren't metal.

And right now, the cop is staggering to his feet, shuffling like in one of those zombie movies when Derek was a kid, remakes of cheesy old stuff. Half his face is chewed away, one eye is dangling, and the other is fixed on Derek.

The one thing Derek remembers about zombies? Shambling or blurry-fast, they're all keen on consuming the flesh of the living. One after another rises, blocking the route to the parking lot, more zombies than ammo. And they're all looking at Sarah and Derek. He's remembering a second thing, and a shot from each of them confirms it. Bullets tear holes in zombie torsos, but don't slow them down.

"Inside!" Sarah says, and they break into a run. Under the archway, into the mall, scanning the shops for possibilities. The sporting goods store has some Louisville Sluggers; blunt instruments can be more effective than explosive ones, when nothing but destruction of the brain will do. A zombie clerk rises from behind the desk and flings itself at Derek. Sarah blows its brains out, the noise echoing in the confines of the store.

"That's going to attract attention," Derek says admiringly.

"You're welcome," Sarah replies with just the hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

Tactics dictate that they need a space where not too many zombies can hit them at once. An access hallway is ideal, and there's one in the direction with the fewest zombies.

"Why are zombies always in malls?" Derek asks. "In the movies, I mean. Is it because everyone wants to see Abercrombie destroyed?" He makes with the cover fire, as Sarah advances, then switches to his bat as the next ones get closer.

"The familiar can be more terrifying than the unknown," Sarah says as she reloads and gives him a chance to catch up with her.

Makes sense. Mall's a place everybody goes, even the undead. Set your horror movie in a mall and tap into everyone's memories.

Derek remembers stores overlaid with rot, rust and vines tearing signage down. Kyle and John's descriptions of Century City fade, though, faced with the reality that this particular mall will never be a work camp full of kids. Instead, it's an...

"What's that fancy French word, sounds like ABBA?" On Sarah's look, Derek adds, "When the end of the world interrupts your education before you finish 9th grade, you don't spend a lot of time with SAT flashcards."

"Abattoir," Sarah says. She flashes a grin at him, and everything slows down as a much larger group of zombies round the corner that looked so safe.

Solid wood in Derek's hand makes a satisfying crack as he splatters zombies all over the tile floor. But he swings too far, and there's one on him. Slathering jaws and a foul odor, and Derek's almost under the teeth when a shot echoes and the zombie's head splatters all over his face. He slips, cursing.

When he's on his feet and can see again, the zombies have Sarah. He can't get her out. He can, however, put a bullet in what's left of her head.

*

By the time Derek gets to the museum, field trip's over. Called on account of zombies. Okay, so they stray from their natural habitat of malls. Or maybe they started in this part of town. Seem to be more of them here, anyhow.

Focusing on the zombie problem isn't going to bring Sarah back, but it keeps his mind busy. Remembering her ruined face isn't conducive to keeping up the fight. Feeling is for later, maybe for some other Derek altogether.

Derek's memories blur, overlaid with images of the past-future, that which was and would never be. Last time the world ended, Terminators roamed the earth. Destroying, yeah, but devouring? Not their style.

He parks the Jeep illegally and shoves the bloody briefcase under the seat. If the world hasn't totally gone to shit, that still might be useful. Right there on the sidewalk, he watches the cyborg punch through a zombie's face. It fights like it dances: effortless, no wasted motions, perfectly calculated. It's protecting a crumpled heap of what John was wearing this morning, and Derek aches at the sight.

At least he won't have to tell John about Sarah. At least she died believing John would live.

He jumps into the fray, smashing zombie heads like Halloween pumpkins. For Sarah, for the John he knew and the John who'd never become him, for everything Kyle left behind. Before he knows it, they've got a little space. It's blurry, but Derek can blink it into focus.

When the street is emptied of zombies, what's left of John is clearly visible. Derek's stomach roils at the sight.

"At least a T-triple 8 just wants to kill you. These things, though... They want to eat brains." He shudders.

He wasn't really talking to the robot, but it answers anyhow. "I have a chip." It shrugs, a strangely human gesture.

"John doesn't," Derek says. "And he got bit. Not great for resting in peace."

"What do we do?" it asks, like it's lost. Nothing in the programming about zombies, Derek bets.

Rather than explaining, Derek slides another clip into his gun.

*

Derek should leave the cyborg here. The mission is aborted, and there's nothing left for it to do now. But there's this empty look in its eyes that even a robot shouldn't have.

They load John's body into the back seat before climbing into the front. The machine licks its hand, delicate pink tongue running over flecks of blood and skin. Possibly a decomposed eyeball, but Derek's too nauseated to look real hard. Times like this, the pretty-girl disguise slips.

"What the fuck?" he manages. Key. Ignition. Go. Sarah's Jeep is the right way to be on the road. No OnStar or any of that other creepy-as-fuck proto-Skynet shit. He tries to ignore the passenger seat.

"Useful for analysis." Like that's an explanation. A blank look that could mean processing, and then that facsimile of personality is back. "They aren't natural."

"No shit, super genius. Tell me something we don't know."

"The blood isn't right." And then nothing more. Not like he should have expected anything else. Metal, even tame metal, isn't what Derek would call helpful.

 

###### Friday February 29, 2008

 

Derek flips through the static, trying to find a radio broadcast. Be nice to know if the sky's going to catch fire any time soon. A little warning this time, maybe. But three days into a zombie apocalypse, your typical on-air personality isn't going to risk brain-eating just to get to work. Probably scared shitless and hiding under the covers.

Judgment Day had a way of burning the fear out of people, so even back in these pre-Skynet days Derek has no patience for the weak. Fight for the living; honor the dead. That's the code.

Yesterday, they drove the jeep right into Valley Square Mall to retrieve Sarah's body. Buried her and John in Almansor Park under a canopy of trees. Derek didn't know what to say, but Cameron choked him up by reciting an account of their lives and times. Full of surprises, that one.

"Commercial-spectrum radio is unlikely to provide any news." Okay, stating the obvious is not one of those surprises. It's kinda expected.

"I'm thinking the ham network is a better bet," Derek says. "I saw a Radio Shack right up the road."

Scrounging up what he needs from their parts bins is much simpler than duct-taping together optech using only ribbon cable and zip drives from the basement of an abandoned municipal complex.

Derek lets Cameron drive while he tries to raise local hams. Nothing useful at first, but they hear that it's all over the valley, up and down the coast, and inland. One woman says something about Phoenix.

A kid is talking about hearing from his uncle in Russia, and Derek's not sure what to believe. Zombie invasion of the Kremlin seems preposterous. But now he knows what he needs to do.

"Head south on the 110," he says. "We're going to find my family."

"That's not a good idea," Cameron says. "The timeline--"

"The old rules don't matter anymore." Derek chews his lower lip. Will her programming allow her to violate this central tenet of time-jumping?

Cameron nods. "No resistance to un-make, because a scavenging band of scattered survivors will never build Skynet. But then why are the zombies synthetic?"

Derek doesn't have any more ideas for that line of speculation; they've talked about nothing else for three days. He looks out the window at the abandoned cars and wonders if he brought this devastation back with him.

*

The second the stench hits him, he wishes they hadn't come. Blood everywhere, but no bodies. He isn't so sure that's a mercy. If Kyle's dead, time's folding in upon itself. Shouldn't there be paradox? How did this even happen, when it never happened before? If his five-year-old brother's a zombie, he... he needs to focus on the problem at hand, or he's never going to move from this spot again.

He looks to see if she's still there, without John to send her back. But there she stands, the only constant. The cruelest of ironies: they don't belong here, and they're the only ones left.

As long as John's programming holds, Cameron is useful. Derek's even a little bit grateful for her. This machine in the shape of a girl is the only one who knows where he's been. He wonders how long she'll follow him, but doesn't want to ask.

End of the world hurts worse the second time around, like a wound reopened.

 

###### Monday April 21, 2008

 

"Three years from today would have been Judgment Day."

Cameron looks up when he says this. No reply; they've discussed this to death already. Nobody left to talk to, not really. Ham network's pretty quiet, and when it's not, the people don't want to be found, not with death coming by way of shuffling horde. The cow-catcher they welded to the front of the jeep means they have to stop and siphon more often, but at least it helps with the zombies on the road.

"Got another lead on the overnight wire. Yeah, it's spreading, but it definitely started here." Derek delivers this like it's news, but of course it started here. It always starts here, one way or another.

Cameron considers. She never takes notes; she just ponders, scans, stores. She's more interested in solving this than he'd think a non-human would be. She never forgets anything.

For Derek, though, memory is a funny thing. Stuff comes back to him, stuff he thought was gone.

"When I was locked up, a fed came to see me. Started talking about synthetic blood all over their murder investigations."

Cameron is interested. "Cromartie."

"Fed must have been curious, sent it to a lab or something. Shit."

"Given the state of biosynthetic drug design in 2008, Cromartie's blood would have enhanced their research."

Derek reaches under the seat and gets out Sarah's old map of the state. It's neatly folded, a sign of the military discipline she was teaching John. A pang of loss hits him, and he swallows. They're going to solve this.

 

###### Thursday June 26, 2008

 

Two months of searching labs up and down the PCH, and they're heading back to Pasadena. Derek wants answers, even if the state of the world is making it obvious that the answers aren't going to help humanity in any substantive way.

He turns the music down a bit. Tape deck; nothing on the radio any more. He's guessing the Guns'n'Roses is John's. _Was._ "And this Caltech one will be different why?"

"In 2010 this lab develops a cancer vaccine. Judgment Day comes before it passes the FDA trials." Cameron actually looks a bit pleased with herself. He wonders how deep that tidbit was buried.

"Okay, let's give it a shot. What's one more going to hurt?" He turns the music back up, wondering if Slash is dead. That would be a tragedy. Not like this entire timeline isn't.

*

The Klomse lab's trashed. Cameron pores through records, while Derek clicks around what's still reachable of the net, looking for updates on brain-eating epidemic. News is pretty grim (where the websites aren't just plain unreachable).

Cameron looks up from the science stuff she gets and he doesn't. "Klomse saw the synthetic blood as a precursor to an anti-aging serum. She was modifying bioactive modules."

But he's heard enough along these lines for that to worry him. "That's... not good. But how is it spreading so fast?"

"There is no record of human testing," Cameron says. "But they turned on antiswitch molecules; the ligand bindings could have behaved unpredictably."

They've been at this long enough that he kinda gets that. "So, accidental stick? Unauthorized self-experimentation? Under-the-table sales to the desperate?"

He wonders if figuring out the original cause will make any difference at this point. Half the world's great cities are under martial law, even the ones without any infection. And this is more warning than they got last time.

"Derek..."

He turns at the unexpected hesitation in her voice, follows her gaze to the doorway.

"We've got company."

At least this is familiar. Kicking ass is what they're both built to do.

*

Lots of cold camps for the 132nd when they were on the move, back in that future that's fading week by week. Your garden-variety metal might not be able to smell, but they could sure-as-shooting see smoke.

Zombies aren't interested in anything but human flesh, though, so the fire's a welcome cover. Fight was pretty rough on them both, but she heals fast. He won't, but a hot meal and a drink (courtesy of an abandoned Albertsons) are nice.

He catches her staring out into space, sitting by the fire she doesn't need. She looks solemn, but then, she always seems touched by sadness. Do robots mourn? When did he start caring if they do?

"The remaining humans are not likely to create Skynet," Cameron says. "Zombies are better for their survival rate. This is a best-case scenario."

Her nonchalant tone is too much for Derek. He doesn't hit girls, but he knows this swing isn't going to connect. Sure enough, she catches his hand in one of hers. It's almost a feeling of satisfaction when her other fist connects with his jaw and he tastes blood. It tastes good, bright with rage.

"I'm not the enemy," she chides him. She paces to the other side of the Jeep. Hoists herself up and sits on the hood gone cold.

He follows, looks out over the valley. Smoke rises in thin plumes, mute witness to the chaos below. "I'm sorry," he tells her.

She slides her small hand over his larger one, clasping it. What passes for her skin is warm. Sitting here with him, she feels more real than the broken world stretched out before them.

"I'm sorry too," she says. "Show me where they got you?"

Derek sighs, pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it aside. Cameron probes the angry bite-mark on his shoulder. He winces; as unexpectedly gentle as she is, she can't avoid hurting him. The air is cool, but the wound burns.

"I don't want to come back like them," he says, an unspoken request hanging between them. Glances at her deceptively delicate profile; he needs to know that she understands him.

Cameron finally smiles. "Don't worry," she says. "I'll take care of you."

**Author's Note:**

> ficangel's request: I want Derek and Cameron to be the only ones alive at the end of some kind of apocalypse. I'm not even finicky about what kind it is: I just want them, as the improbable time-jumpers and mortal enemies, to have to deal with each other. Also, though it's not strictly required, I have an unhealthy fascination with Derek/Cameron.


End file.
